Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, who helped defeat Japan, then France, then the United States in a 35-year war for national independence, died in Hanoi on October 4 at the age of 102. He had been ailing and living in a military hospital for the last four years.

Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty to 10 charges including possessing and willfully communicating to an unauthorized person all the main elements of the WikiLeaks disclosure. The charges carry a total of 20 years in prison. For the first time, Bradley spoke publicly about what he did and why. His actions, now confirmed by his own words, reveal Bradley to be a very brave young man.

“Welfare, as a universal institution, is the logical aspirational consequence of a unified nation. This union is a rare occurrence because, consciously or not, much thought and effort goes into insuring it does not happen.”

When the Dismal Thirties succeeded the Roaring Twenties nations everywhere became restive. Free market private capitalism had failed and its financial structures had collapsed, leaving an ideological void that threatened the foundations of power and wealth. Continue reading this...

Aaron Leonard, Truthout: Journalist Victor Riesel’s work in the 1940s to 1980s as an FBI-friendly news source – creating suspicion of dissidents and dividing labor from student activists – is continued today by his many intellectual heirs.

Critics of President Obama’s 2011 aerial intervention in Libya may recall one of that conflict’s most striking features: the administration’s failure to invoke the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR). The War Powers Resolution is that tasteless congressional fruit of the late VietnamWar era. Continue reading this...

The Legacy of Two World Wars

The Origins of the First and Second World Wars currently hover like Twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity. It is the Unlimited Imperialists along the lines of Alexander, Rome, Napoleon and Hitler who are now in charge of conducting American foreign policy.

South African Archbishop and Nobel LaureateDesmond Tutu speaks during an interview with Reuters in New Delhi February 8, 2012.(Reuters / B Mathur)

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of SouthAfrica and two other Nobel Peace winners have written to the foundation to protest the decision to award the 2012 prize to the EU.

The letter was also signed by Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland, who won the prize for her efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the troubles in 1976 and by Argentina’s Adolfo Perez Esquivel who won the laureate in 1980.

“The EU is clearly not ‘the champion of peace’ that Alfred Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will. The Norwegian Nobel committee has redefined and remodeled the prize in a manner that it is not consistent with the law,” they said in an open letter.

A Transnational Corporate Coup over the Democratic Process & Public Accountability

In 2008, the United StatesTrade Representative Susan Schwab announced the U.S. entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks as “a pathway to broader Asia-Pacific regional economic integration.” Originating in 2005 as a “Strategic Economic Partnership” between a few select Pacific countries, the TPP has, as of October 2012, expanded to include 11 nations in total: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia, with the possibility of several more joining in the future.

Israel’s military has in recent days attacked the Gaza strip with drones and F-16s, and has apparently been preparing for a possible ground war. Israel is using weaponry provided by the United States at the expense to U.S. taxpayers of $3 billion per year. Veterans For Peace member Doug Rawlings adresses the following statement to members of the Israeli military:

The term “double tapping” fails to do justice to a military tactic that’s arguably sociopathic

Remember the “dead bastards” — as in “look at those” — video, which was the first of the Bradley Manning stash released by WikiLeaks? It depicted an April 2010 Apache helicopter strike that killed a dozen Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters employees. Its impact was fourfold because it featured: Continue reading this...

It’s 2025 and an American “triple canopy” of advanced surveillance and armed drones fills the heavens from the lower- to the exo-atmosphere. A wonder of the modern age, it can deliver its weaponry anywhere on the planet with staggering speed, knock out an enemy’s satellite communications system, or follow individuals biometrically for great distances. Along with the country’s advanced cyberwar capacity, it’s also the most sophisticated militarized information system ever created and an insurance policy for U.S. global dominion deep into the twenty-first century. It’s the future as the Pentagon imagines it; it’s under development; and Americans know nothing about it.

Arriving in a village in southern Vietnam, I caught sight of two children who bore witness to the longest war of the 20th century. Their terrible deformities were familiar. All along the Mekong river, where the forests were petrified and silent, small human mutations lived as best they could.